The upper body of a goddess or woman playing a harp - perhaps one of the Muses - remains intact in this fragment from a Roman red slip redware vessel. Redware from North Africa was in common use around the Mediterranean in Roman times and to a lesser extent in Rome's European provinces between the 2nd and 4th centuries, which makes this beautiful artifact at least 1,600 years old. More curved than our other piece of figural redware (a fish), our Muse must be a portion of an ancient bowl. The shard measures 3 1/2" x 3 1/8" and was found in Roman Tunisia. It reached us via an English antiquities dealer.

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